& nbsp;  My ex-husband was the first to admit that he could be rather mean-spirited; in truth, he often boasted of the fact, as if his ability to snap someone’s head off with a cruel retort were a virtue to be proud of. It was a “talent” he learned at an early age from his stepfather, but he perfected it beyond even the old man’s ability. Unfortunately, during the five years I was married to him, I found myself most often on the receiving end of his cutting wit. At first, I had very little defense against this verbal abuse, until I realized that, while able to pull a nasty name out of the air at any given moment, he had very little common sense, and could be positively gullible at times. Laughter is the best balm for hurt feelings, especially when the laughter is at the expense of one’s tormentor.

On one day, shortly before we finally decided to split up, he was in an especially nasty mood. He had managed to find fault with nearly everything and everyone around him. The kids had scattered to safer places, and I was feeling completely dejected. It was just after Christmas, and I was busily un-decorating the large cut Christmas tree in our living room when he came in from outside. I braced myself for yet another biting comment, but instead he, for once, simply made an observation.

“That tree still looks fresh,” he commented. “Look, the needles don’t even fall off when you pull on them. It is a shame we have to throw it in the trash.”

I looked up at him and considered for a moment. “Well, we really don’t have to, actually,” I said in all seriousness.

“Why not?” he asked, playing right into my hands.

“I read a story in [some magazine] a few days ago, about a family who replanted their Christmas tree in memory of their dead grandma. They just cut off the bottom, so the fresh wood was exposed; then they planted it in their yard and watered it.”

His eyebrows rose in interest; he was hooked. “Did it work?” he asked, as I dug my nails into my palms to maintain a straight face.

“Oh, yeah, it worked wonderfully. They showed a picture of that tree, and it was twenty feet high already, and they only replanted it a few years ago.”

That was all it took; I had scarcely removed all the ornaments from the tree when he dragged it out to the front yard. Painstakingly he sawed off the bottom six inches from the trunk, and then he set about digging a large hole while the dead tree lay waiting patiently to be resurrected. After I poured myself a stiff rum and Pepsi, I went out to enjoy the show from the front yard sidelines. As my ex began planting the tree, my friend next door joined me at the edge of our yard.

“Am I missing something,” she began, “or is he planting a dead….”

“SHHH! Not so loud, he may hear you,” I answered in a whisper. Living next door to us, she was often the unwilling witness to my ex’s foul temper, and she just smiled in understanding and sat down in the lawn chair next to mine.

For several weeks my ex-husband went out religiously every morning and watered the dead tree before leaving for work. He even gave it gallons of blue plant food. He became famous in the neighborhood; people often asked me in passing if the miracle had happened yet. And whenever he yelled at me or told me how stupid I was for those wonderful days, I just smiled, knowing that he was not nearly as smart, and I was not quite as dumb, as he thought.

As time passed, the once-fresh needles on the tree turned from green to a dry khaki brown, and still he poured water and effort into it. Of course, this amusement could not last forever. One day he went out to water his beloved dead tree and found it leaning a bit to one side. He took hold of the trunk and attempted to straighten it. What happened was a scene straight out of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Nearly every one of the brittle brown needles dropped like a rock to the ground, leaving my ex holding the bare trunk of an obviously deceased tree. I watched from the front window, my eyes pouring tears from laughing so hard and trying to keep it silent.

Amazingly, he took his failed efforts at raising dead plants in stride. He pulled the tree’s remains out of the ground and proceeded to chop it up for compost. He then scattered the pieces over the front yard. Having no experience with compost, he did not realize that the pieces have to be smaller than six inches to decompose into fertilizer. There were still dead-tree parts all over the yard when we moved out several months later; we were divorced within the year.

I got a lot of mileage and many laughs from this story over the next few years following our divorce. So when my daughter brought her boyfriend to our house one night the winter after her graduation from high school, I relayed the story of my ex and the dead tree to him as we all sat soaking in our Jacuzzi tub. He roared with laughter, but for some reason my daughter did not seem to think it was as funny as it had been when it first happened. At first I thought that she was being protective of her father. “What’s wrong,?” I asked her.

“It’s not funny anymore,” she said with a disgusted expression on her face. “He made me water that thing every day. I felt like a moron.”

I was perplexed. “He did not; he watered it himself, every morning. He never asked you to do it.”

She folded her arms, clearly annoyed. “Oh, yeah, he did, last year, while I was staying with him over Christmas break. He did it again!”

I nearly drowned laughing in my hot tub, and so did the boyfriend.

It is always a satisfying turn of events to see a bully get his comeuppance. However, there is nothing more gratifying than watching as the bully unwittingly amuses those he’s abused. Except, of course, if he does it again, and again, and again….